


there's no living with or without you

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Humour, Non-SHIELD AU, Rivalry, a spies au with no shield if that makes sense, spies au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27374485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: “The CIA?” Hunter looks at the folder in his hands, willing the words to change to something, anything, else. “Why does it have to be the CIA?”Someone in the higher ups must have it in for him, that’s the only explanation why MI6 would have teamed him up with the CIA to complete this operation. He sighs deeply. If he could just exhale his lungs straight out of his body then maybe he wouldn’t have to go.If anyone asks, Hunter hates working with the CIA to complete missions, especially if they end up sending a certain blonde. But only if anyone asks. A non-SHIELD spies AU
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	there's no living with or without you

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is just something fun and light-hearted I wrote back for Day 1 of AU August (oh wow that seems like such a long time ago) but never got around to posting because I couldn't do the rest of the challenge. It's quite silly but I thought it was good to have some light-heartedness every so often!
> 
> I hope you like it <3

“You can’t be bloody serious, mate. Surely you can’t be.”

Fitz presses his lips together. “Afraid I am.”

“The _CIA?”_ Hunter looks at the folder in his hands, willing the words to change to something, anything, else. “Why does it have to be the CIA?”

Someone in the higher ups must have it in for him, that’s the only explanation why MI6 would have teamed him up with the CIA to complete this operation. He sighs deeply. If he could just exhale his lungs straight out of his body then maybe he wouldn’t have to go.

“Cheer up,” Fitz says, but he’s not looking up at Hunter, rather down at a set of cuff links on his workbench that he’s trying to equip with radiation sensors. It’s all very easy for him to tell Hunter to cheer up; he gets to stay here with his tools and his toys. He doesn’t have to go work with the CIA officer they’re no doubt going to send.

“Shut up,” Hunter says, “You can’t tell me to cheer up. Not when you don’t have to work with her.”

“They might not send her. It might be someone else. Then you’ll feel pretty stupid.”

“It’s always her,” Hunter says through gritted teeth, shutting the folder with a snap and thwacking it down on Fitz’s bench, who glares up at him as several bits and bobs scatter in all directions. Hunter’s not even sorry. That’ll teach Fitz for being a bloody smartarse.

“You don’t know that for sure. And now, ‘cause of your attitude, you’ll have to go without your cuff links and then you’ll be sorry.” Fitz gathers his things back together. “You did read that you were going to a nuclear plant, right? Or did you just see _CIA_ and throw a strop?”

“It doesn’t matter, Fitz! She’s my bloody rival. We could be going to the Bahamas and it would still feel like hell on Earth with her. She’s the she-devil!”

Hunter groans dramatically and sits on the edge of Fitz’s workbench, clearly getting onto the edge of his patient. At his most silky, cool as a cucumber without looking up, he says, “I kind of liked Agent Morse when she was last here.”

Unable to believe his ears, the betrayal boiling his blood, Hunter stands up and smacks his hand back down on the bench. “You’re a traitor,” he seethes. “You can’t seriously like that insufferable American.”

“And you’re all talk. Everyone here knows that you still have a thing for her but you’re just too afraid to admit it after she broke up with you last time, so you just pretend to hate her.”

“I _do_ hate her,” he says earnestly, a little too earnestly, but he’s too riled up to hear it. “And that’s rich, coming from the guy who took ten years to admit to his best friend he liked her.”

Fitz absent-mindedly twirls his gold wedding ring, as he always does whenever his wife is mentioned. He doesn’t even know that he does it so often. Hunter wonders if Bobbi Morse notices things like that about her friends, or if she’s so caught up with her evil schemes that she doesn’t have the chance.

“Yeah, well, don’t be like me,” Fitz sighs, still not even looking up. “Learn from my mistakes and all that.”

“She could kill me on this mission. Kill me and chop my body up into tiny little bits and dump them in a nuclear reactor. Then you’ll be sorry, and you’ll regret the day you ever said you liked her.”

Hunter picks up his file with a frown and turns to storm out of the lab. He doesn’t miss Fitz shouting back, “Not bloody likely. I think I might even thank her!” as he goes.

**Twenty seven hours later. Undisclosed location.**

The biting wind makes it hard for Hunter to speak. He’s used to Great British weather enough, but this is something else. It eats into his skin, burning away, and he shivers in his great big coat, which feels like it’s made out of nothing more than paper.

The MI6 team assigned to this mission gather in a huddle, looking more like lost sheep rather than highly trained operatives. Hunter would find it entertaining if he weren’t one of the herd. Standing in an empty cement wasteland, they couldn’t look any less covert if they tried.

“I wish they’d hurry up,” someone moans. Hunter can barely make out who it is over their big furry hood and the scarf tugged up to their eyes.

“Typical Americans,” another someone says. “Couldn’t be on bloody time if their life depended on it.”

“I’ll bet they’re sending that blonde one again,” the original furry hood says. “Struts in about here like she owns the place.”

Lance Hunter, if anyone asks, detests Barbara Morse. She is a bloody demon, and her blonde curls disguise her horns, and her big puffy coat will disguise her tail. She haunts his dreams and steals his thoughts and his nearly every waking moment involves her in some way or another. But that’s him. She screwed him over and stole his heart and he’s _allowed_ to think that. Just him. Only him. Not some little prick in a too-big duffel coat whose only experience of ‘hostile infiltration’ previous to this mission is when he snuck into his parents’ house, steaming after a night out.

“Oi!” He shouts, marching over, quite enjoying the sensation of boiling blood in his freezing veins.

“What?” The eyes underneath the furry hood narrow indignantly.

Hunter resists the urge to grab the weasel by his collar and chuck him over his shoulder. “Speak like that about Agent Morse again and I’ll knock your bloody teeth in.”

The second furry hood has eyes that widen in recognition. “You’re Hunter, right? Didn’t she dump your arse?”

“So she did,” the original furry hood says, clearly not knowing when to shut up. “I’m on your side, mate. We need to speak up against them, stop them from threatening our turf. I’ve got you, mate. I’ve got you. Doing you a favour, really.”

He speaks like he’s in some terrible drama about North London that’s supposed to be gritty but is just cringy as hell. Hunter narrows his eyes in disgust. How this guy got past selection is a mystery to him.

“Bobbi Morse is worth about a hundred of you,” he says in the furry hood’s face, enjoying the way his blue eyes seem to almost go grey at the menace in Hunter’s voice. “You’re embarrassing yourself and you’re embarrassing the organisation.”

“I…”

“Just shut up and clear off. The pair of you. Or I’ll let Agent Morse kick both of your arses when she gets here and trust me, she won’t be as gentle as I’m being right now.”

He releases his grip on the guy’s collar, staring at him as he stumbles back for a moment before righting himself, grabbing the arm of his furry-hooded friend and dragging him away. Hunter keeps his steely gaze on them as he goes.

“I bet they don’t even last the rest of the day before they’re on the SatPhone to mission control, begging to go home.”

He freezes even more than he’s already frozen at the smooth voice that comes from behind him. “They’ll be back in their mums’ beds before the sun sets no doubt.” He turns around. “Hello, Barbara.”

“Hello, Lance,” she grins, and for a split, traitorous second, he feels warm.

She stands there in a maroon puffy jacket with a black woollen hat on her head, looking like she’s right at home. Hip cocked, eyebrows raised, she’s exactly how he remembers her, and it makes him spiteful and remorseful all at once.

“I could’ve done that myself you know,” she tells him, gesturing to the retreating furry hoods. “But thanks.”

“No problem.” He stands there nodding, hands shoved deep into his pockets. “How you been?”

“Oh you know, cooking up all sorts of chaos in my role as mother of all evil.” She gives him a pointed look. “You?”

“Being famously immature and unreliable as always, love.”

“Glad to see nothing’s changed,” she says, and he can’t decipher how she means.

“Too much effort,” he says snarkily.

She nods like she expected his answer all along. Passionate lovers or mortal enemies, it seems as though there’s no in-between for them. Can’t live with or without her, it seems. That bloody U2 song had a point.

Lover and enemy she will always be, but right now she is his rival, and the gleam in her eyes tells him that she knows it.

“This is a competition, right?” She glances around the field, CIA and MI6 huddling like children in a playground. “First one of us to breach the room wins?”

He thinks it over and then ups the stakes. “First one to breach the room _and_ make it back out.”

“What’s the prize?”

“Dinner,” he says, automatically and without thinking. “Loser has to buy dinner.”

She smiles and even in this deathly cold he can see how it lights up her eyes. His heart thumps under his many jumpers. “Deal.”

Just then there’s a shout, and the group begins to converge on it immediately. Bobbi raises an eyebrow. “Ready?”

“Always, love,” he grins. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day and are managing to stay safe and well in this crazy world <3


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